Welcome Girls and Ghosts (Boys) to yet another Shocktober! This year’s theme is G-G-G-GHOSTS! Yes, in honor of movies like The Conjuring: Last Rites and Good Boy (neither of which we’ll be covering) Shocktober is now Shock-BOO-ber. Which is a great name for an adult film. I could spitball some ideas for that but instead lets put on our proton packs, place our fingers on our planchettes, and dive into the Further!
I can’t believe we’ve been doing Shocktober Month for sixteen years and have never covered William Castle. We covered Herschel Gordon Lewis for chrissakes, and I don’t care what Jason Bateman said about him in Juno, he’s a hack. Castle, on the other hand, was a master showman. He may not have been the most sophisticated storyteller, he was known as the “Master of the Gimmick,” after all, but he cared about his audiences. He wanted them to feel like they had to be there, because they were part of the show. And even sixty-five years later, you can still feel the carnival-barker energy in films like William Castle’s 13 Ghosts.
Apart from 13 Ghosts, the only William Castle films I’ve seen are House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler, both when I was but a boy. I believe Castle is a perfect entry point for younger audiences interested in old horror movies. His films are short, packed with thrills, chills, and the occasional spills. Watching a William Castle movie is like stepping into a haunted house at a theme park, he holds nothing back.
What I didn’t know until now is that William Castle spent fifteen years as a journeyman director before becoming the “King of the Gimmick.” Throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, he made westerns and crime films, but it wasn’t until Macabre (1958) that he came up with the idea of offering a $1,000 life insurance policy from Lloyd’s of London in case audience members died of fright. The film was a surprise hit, and Castle rarely strayed from the horror genre after that.
13 Ghosts came after Castle’s two biggest hits, House on Haunted Hill (1959) and The Tingler (1959), and proved to be another notch in his belt. The gimmick this time was “Illusion-O”: audiences were given red and blue cellophane glasses (similar to 3D glasses). Looking through the red filter intensified the images of the ghosts, while the blue filter made them disappear. So, if you were a big scaredy-cat, you could choose to see nothing. Who the Hell would pay to see a movie called 13 Ghosts and choose not to see the ghosts?
“How is the film apart from all the bells and whistles?” Oh, it’s fine. It’s about as cliché a ghost story as you can get: a father (Charles Herbert) inherits a huge house from his recently deceased occultist uncle. They move in, see ghosts, want to leave, discover they aren’t allowed to sell the house, and have to figure out how to stop the ghosts. The premise is so familiar but also the movie is old enough that you wonder, “Was this the first movie to do this idea?” But I doubt it.
What’s unique about 13 Ghosts is that it has, well… thirteen ghosts. And we’re introduced to them in the opening credits, each ghost flashing on screen with a number next to it like a Sesame Street segment. Wanna get to know your ghosts? Here they are (cue “Sirius” by the Alan Parsons Project:
The First Ghost: A flaming skeleton.
The Second Ghost: A medieval-style executioner with an axe, accompanied by its decapitated victim.
The Third Ghost: The spirit of a woman who died by hanging who sways in the air.
The Fourth Ghost: A ghostly lion. Yep, we got an animal ghost!
The Fifth Ghost: The lion tamer who the lion ghost killed. That’s pretty funny.
The Sixth Ghost: A Chef who looks like the ghost of Chef Boyardee.
The Seventh Ghost: A jockey in racing silks. Giddy up.
The Eighth Ghost: AKA Dr. Zorba, the occultist uncle whose death triggered the haunting.
The Ninth Ghost: A floating head. Damn, dude doesn’t even get his body back in death.
The Tenth Ghost: A flame ghost. Wait, we have two fire ghosts?
The Eleventh Ghost: A gambler ghost with a deck of cards.
The Twelfth Ghost: Generic skeletons that appear. They really ran out of ideas after ghost seven, huh?
The Thirteenth Ghost: The “Future Ghost” of one of our living characters. Ooh, who will it be?! I haven’t introduced any of the characters so you’ll never know.
I enjoy most of the designs even if none of the ghosts are remotely scary. Even when they pop up there’s never much buildup or suspense. The characters can’t even see the ghosts unless they wear these funny glasses designed by Dr. Zorba. It reminds me of what it’s like to ride the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. You appreciate the craftsmanship and the vibe but you’re not scared unless you’re a mega diaper baby.
13 Ghosts is the perfect background movie to have on while you’re shuffling back and forth between the couch and the front door to greet trick-or-treaters. It’s fun and festive, but as an actual movie it’s the equivalent of a carnival magician making a rabbit disappear. You think, “Oh, that’s neat,” and then move on and forget about it. But there’s nothing wrong with that, sometimes all we need is a quick flash of excitement. A gimmick. And no one did gimmicks better than William Castle.
Eat your heart out, James Cameron.